Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Off to Dublin to Be Humiliated

I am just off to Dublin to appear in a TV programme called THE PANEL on RTE. From what I can make out it's an Irish version of HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU, albeit with a different and more spontaneous format. There is a host (Colin Murphy) and four comedians, and in each half of the programme they have a different guest. This programme will look back on the Irish elections. One recent guest said this about the show...

It’s a pretty funny show, I sat in the green room being fed peeled fruit bynaked groupies wondering what it would be like to be the least funny person inthe room. Luckily we joined forces and devised an innovative public healthpromotion strategy.

Why do I have this feeling of impending doom? If anyone's interested, we record it tonight (for two hours!) and the best 45 minutes are shown at 10.30pm on Wednesday on RTE2.

Have a look at the video of the most recent programme HERE. Pick the 16 May programme as it previewed their elections. They had a real go at Sinn Fein in a way which if a UK broadcaster had done it, they would have been taken to OfCom! Lots of gangster and kneecapping jokes!

UPDATE 12.40am: Well, I survived. Sort of. It will be interesting to see how it's edited, let's put it that way!

Funnily enough a mate of mine who is a proud Belfast catholic used to live in Cromwell Avenue and also speaks up for Cromwell's tattered reputation at every opportunity. I'd try bigging up Cromwell Iain ... this will have them on the back foot. He had an enormous organ in the head department. He resisted becoming king when he had the chance. He pissed off the ordinary grafters who had once idolized him. He was a Tory.

I'd try bigging up Cromwell Iain ... this will have them on the back foot. He had an enormous organ in the head department. He resisted becoming king when he had the chance. He pissed off the ordinary grafters who had once idolized him. He was a Tory.

Cromwell was the 17th century's Tony Blair.

He was a nulab spin doctor though and through. A power crazed, war mongering, money mad, violent schizophrenic, who used his putative religion for the most violent persecution of opponents.

Cromwell sold peerages and was addicted to corrupt freebies.

Claiming that he was 'just an ordinary, decent sort of bloke', he shut 2000 Irish people in a church and giggled as he watched his troops burn it to the ground.

He resisted becoming king when he had the chance. He pissed off the ordinary grafters who had once idolized him. He was a Tory.

Chris, the evil wretch declared himself Lord Protector, higher than a monarch - whom he'd had beheaded. He was a sort of quasi- emperor and he stole the luxuries to go with the title.

Cromwell's reign was the English equivalent of the French Reign of Terror. The compulsive liar who had his own Ministry of truth terrorised everyone, even the rich aristos who financed him - one of whom gave him a golden coach in which he drove around like a maniac.

Everyone was terrified of Cromwell. His lying, Politically Correct, bogus religious and ideological hegemony made the English afraid to speak a word out of place for fear of violent reprisal.

His madness, vanity and arrogance lead to him quite literally shooting himself in the bum and he died a miserable old man, tormented by his own evil deeds and his failures. Good riddance.

Tory? You have to be kidding. He was the original nulab and as Blair as you can get.

But he did not treat the Irish any worse than was normal in medieval European warfare. The Irish just think they were treated especially badly because they were too ignorant and far away from the continent to know any better. Despite the fact that Irish mercenaries made a living from such warfare. On the other hand, Irish academics at e.g. Dublin University know that perfectly well.